Describe the role of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.The answer should have quotes and references from the text.

Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer Night's
Dream, tells the story of young lovers and a troupe of actors, caught in the
woods after dark, at the mercy of mischievous fairies who turn the humans' lives
up-side-down, if only for a night.

Shakespeare wrote his
plays for an Elizabethan audience who totally believed in a supernatural world of
witches and fairies. Critics credit Shakespeare with making fairies friendlier creatures
than they had been perceived of before. Prior to Shakespeare's portrayal of fairies as
child-like creatures—and their rulers Oberon and Titania as parent-figures to
humans—fairies were believed to be evil.

In his article,
"Shakespeare's Fairies: The Triumph of Dramatic Art," William J. Rolfe
writes:

The
fact is, Shakespeare was but slightly interested in the human characters of the present
play...It was the fairies who chiefly attracted him, and on whom he lavished the wealth
of his genius. They have been aptly called "the favourite children of his romantic
fancy..."

These critics
applaud Shakespeare's ability to create such "fanciful" creatures as Rolfe declares that
Shakespeare's pleasure in character development for this comedy centered not around the
humans, but the fairies; and it is, in fact, in their domain, that
most of the play's comedy occurs.

Rolfe goes on to describe
the characteristics of the fairies:

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...in some respects they are like human
children. Like young children before they have learned the distinction between right and
wrong, they have no moral sense, and little or no comprehension of such sense in the
mortals with whom they are associated. Like children, they live in the present...They
think and feel like the child. Their loves and their quarrels are like those of the
child.

What an excellent way
for Shakespeare to approach these creatures: presenting them like children. Adults often
view children's antics with humor rather than censorship, and we tolerantly chuckle over
their games, arguments, and even the ways they try to
impress.

The purpose of the fairies is to provide comedy,
giving them child-like characteristics. The lovers in the woods fall in and out of love
with the wrong people. The fairies play tricks on the actors practicing in the woods to
scare them. In essence, the fairies entertain the audience by playing tricks on the
humans—and each other (as Oberon childishly tricks
Titania).

For instance, Oberon instructs Puck to use a
"love potion" on the eyes of a "disdainful youth" (Demetrius) so that he will fall in
love ostensibly with Helena. Puck "charms" the wrong man; when
Lysander awakes, he sees and falls in love
with Helena.

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Content with Hermia? No! I do repent / The
tedious minutes I with her have spent... (II, ii,
118-119)

Helena thinks he
mocks her:

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Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? / When
at your hands did I deserve such scorn? (II, ii,
129-130)

So begins the
"comedy of errors" of humans controlled by the fairy
world.

Even Puck's summation of the condition of humans
affords a laugh:

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Lord, what fools these mortals be. (III, ii,
115)

Lastly, because Oberon
is angry with Titania, his wife, he sends Puck to her bower to charm her eyes. Puck
turns Bottom into an "ass," and when she wakes, it is with Bottom she falls in
love.

Pucks reports to
Oberon:

My
mistress with a monster is in love...An ass's noll I fixed on his
head

Shakespeare's "children"
(fairies) provide a grand source of comedy for his audience. This, then, is the role
they have in the play.